If you send your kid to secondary school still believing in Santa the resulting fallout is on your head

[Stripitout]

Try and weigh up how important your Christmas magic is against your kid being mercilessly teased when their peers find out they still believe

We were chatting about this at work this week as my boss and his wife told their 11 year old son the truth this year. He’s devastated and keeps saying “I wish you hadn’t told me, Christmas isn’t the same now,” which I think is so sad! DSD9 is still a staunch believer and we’ve had these chats but I honestly think we will leave her to find out for herself.

That you would assume that on the scant information in the OP says more about you than her frankly.

Mine are adults but they were never bullied for any beliefs as they were raised to to be resilient and not tolerate any unkindness or attempts to bully them.

Let your children believe in Father Christmas if the child is happy but give them the tools in life to stand up to bullies.

😂🤣

We were raised about as far from Christian as you can get, and we all LOVED Christmas. And - you might want to sit down for this - it was because of some of the stuff Christians profess to believe in but never actually do: taking meals to the old people’s home and spending an hour or so playing games and delivering presents, family together even if it involved sacrifice, expressing gratitude for the year gone and sorrow for losses experienced and hope for the year to come. Nothing to do with Jesus, no church-going, but a time for generosity of the heart (and the shops etc being closed so no shadow of a doubt as to what the priority was for those few days: community, family, love rather than commerce and profit). I find your post deeply un-Christian 😂

It's not a conversation I ever bothered to have with any of my three DDs. No problems at all, and I am certain that by 11 (like most 11 year olds) they no longer believed and hadn't for some time.

They survived. All in their twenties now so it was a long time ago.

Absolutely. Totally ludicrous.

DS1 worked it out, I had to tell DS2 before he started high school. They are both ND but DS2 has ASD.
DD is 11 and in her final year of primary school. I'm pretty sure she knows the big man isn't real but I haven't confirmed that.
We've never done the Easter Bunny, and when she lost a tooth last week she just cut out the middle man and gave it to DH in exchange for £1.

So if your child(ren) grow up and decide God is myth their parents shoved down their throats you think your family is going to fall apart at the holidays?

Doubtful based on most of the families I know, including mine.

Honestly santa has never been a BIG DEAL in my house he brings a few stocking gifts never the main gift and is casual about existing pretty sure ds1 held out hope for a long time after he "knew" but he was dealing with trauma so didn't mention it to anyone

I'm pretty sure my DS still did believe at 11 and I told him before he started secondary (he's 15 now, so not that long ago) he had access to the Internet but not social media. He'd rather look up.a snake eating a whole deer on deadly 60, or someone doing 100 levels of trick shots

It’s not bullying to tell an 11 year old that Santa doesn’t exist and to find it a bit funny that they still believe. It is a sad fact that kids are growing up quicker and there is just some information that kids deserve to have before they are thrown into the free for all that can be secondary school. I’m a secondary teacher and if anyone mentions Santa not being real in a year 7 class I always pretend I don’t know what they are talking about and say I believe in Santa but bloody hell it’d be a shit way to find out, in the middle of geography half way through November.
Tell them when you are telling them about sex and porn; because unfortunately they need that information too - and you definitely want to be ahead of that conversation.

He wasn't allowed on the internet. There are still kids who are parented properly

It's not really about the internet though. Most kids have a sense of just how huge the world is, how many children there are, the logistics of travelling around the world. They start observing the army of "Santas" making appearances at shopping malls...logical thinking kicks in.

I'd be worried if my 11 year old truly believed in Santa. Gives me visions of the Will Ferrell character in the movie "Elf"! " Santa is coming!" Jaysus😂

Absolutely agree. You are doing them a disservice if you dont. Parents who dont are doing it for themselves not for their kids benefit. Time for everyone to grow up.

‘Kids are growing up quicker’ - not all of them, evidently.

Never realised playground teasing can be helpful.

I can't think that an 11 year old who is not developmentally delayed seriously believes in Santa as literally real. Their thinking and reasoning skills must surely tell them that flying reindeer and a sleigh big enough for a present for every child in the world is not possible. They are playing along and having fun by that age, maybe don't want their parents to stop traditions that they've grown up with and enjoy. My boys still put stockings out but they know it's me who fills them.

I struggle to believe that any nt dc believe in santa at 11.

But bullies will always find a way to bully. It's a misnomer to say that the solution to bullying is telling dc about santa. The bully will pick on something else.

The issue is parents who don't teach their dc not to bully.

Sorry but how on earth can a secondary-aged kid still actually believe in Santa? There is one thing keeping up the charade with your parents but to actually still believe, I'd wonder whether there are some issues going on?? My youngest figured it out when he was around 4/5 (but we insisted on keeping it up) and my eldest was perhaps a year older.

Assuming that is directed at me? Ok I’ll bite.

The (vast?) majority of secondary pupils have access to the internet. Many have a smartphone. A lot of parents idea of parental controls are ‘we know the passwords and can check your phone when we want’. Fine. Now whether you like it or not, they are children your 11 year old Santa-believing child will be mixing with. They don’t have to be mean about it for the believer to feel utterly shit that this basic information was not conveyed to them by people who love them.
And I’m right about the porn part too.

You don't have to believe in Father Xmas/Santa to love Christmas. We love all the wonderful moments together, the games, the candles, lights, the aromas, the decorations, open fires etc...still magical.

Why is not being allowed on the internet being “parented properly”?! Parenting moves with the times!

How about raising kids not to bully?

Tell them when you are telling them about sex and porn; because unfortunately they need that information too

"You know what Father Christmas is leaving you under the tree? Why it's your first HPV vaccine! The elves made it at the North Pole" 😂😂

It sounds like your family have established some great family rituals.
my comment was based on trying to figure out why some families hold on to the idea of Father Christmas beyond early childhood- resulting in kids of 11/12 being embarrassed by discovering it’s fantasy -which was the piunt of the original post- why do some parents keep pushing this idea? I wondered if it was because they didn’t have other strong rituals.

It’s odd, my parents never told me Santa didn’t exist, can’t remember when I figured it out but it wasn’t a big deal. Dc who got bullied at my school were bullied for reason like too skinny, overweight, poor, didn’t have the things everyone had, glasses, bad at sport, etc.

If your kid’s never been on the internet by 13 then you are setting them up for an even bigger issue than at secondary school than not telling them the truth about Santa. Thats
not good parenting. In fact it’s the opposite.